Jamie Hince

I loved all that riot-grrl scene and Nation of Ulysses and Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear. I loved it. It was the moment sort of first growing up where bands had stopped looking like roadies.

When I was a kid growing up, I lived in a little rural village called Woolton Hill, and the nearest town was Newbury. No bands played anywhere near us, so as much as I wanted to be on the grid and in the loop, I never was.

I saw a picture of a girl using an eyelash curler when I was a kid, and I thought it was some sort of torture device, the eye guillotine.

The Tin Drum' is one of my favourite books of all time - I've probably got 12 or 15 copies with different covers, different translations - but it's also just about my favourite film.

I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.

It feels like being in a band is a luxury now: like you can only do it if you're signed really early or you come from a wealthy family.

Being in a band is not about reality - it's a bit of a fantasy. I can't go on stage as my ordinary self and just play - I've got to become my 'superhuman self.'

I get excited by being in the studio and could never get burnt out in there.

I was vegan for about 20 years.

The best part of touring has to be playing shows.

There are a lot of things about Russian culture, art, music, photography and literature that I'm love with.

I've carved a different path which is not that affected by what happens in the bad side of politics. I've always surrounded myself with music and art and love and all those things - pleasures that are sort of immune from all that.